Talk:High Plains

I wonder what counties are considered part of the High Plains region? The reason I ask is that when researching the placement of Texas cities and towns, Wikipedia and other references will identify which county and state a place is in, but not which tourist region. For example: I deduce that Dallam County is in this region only because the county seat,Dalhart, is already listed here. However, it would be nice to know for certain which other counties are also here. I have spent ages looking at maps trying to guess which region a Texas town is in, based on the shape of the region matching the county border, but not knowing for certain that I have it right. - Huttite 21:32, 12 December 2009 (EST)

Thanks for that, though comparing that to this map from the (Texas) Panhandle Tourism Marketing Council suggests they think High Plains make up almost all of the Panhandle. My plea was not only for a map but the county names as well, so I know where to draw the line based on text. And not need to consult a fairly indistinct and featureless map that a rather vague line has been drawn on. From these maps and accompaning descriptions, I gather that: Dallam, Sherman, Hansford, Ochiltree, Lipscomb, Hartley, Moore, Hutchinson, Roberts, Hemphill, Oldham, Potter, Carson, Gray, Wheeler, Deaf Smith, Randall, Armstrong, Donley, and Collingsworth counties are in the High Plains region. (Which leaves Parmer, Castro, Swisher, Briscoe, Hall and Childress counties to go into other regions.) - Huttite 05:39, 13 December 2009 (EST)

The way I defined the region was a horizontal line extending west from where the Red River hits the Oklahoma border, which essentially bisects Parmer, Castro, Swisher, Briscoe, Hall and Childress counties. Being from Texas (and the High Plains in particular), I have never given much thought to county borders when traveling around the state-- there are simply too many, and no one thinks to themselves "I'm going to visit X county". And you'd be hard-pressed to find a Texan that could accurately locate even 10% of Texas counties on a map. The fact is that most of Briscoe, Hall and Childress counties are technically not High Plains because they are down off the Caprock. As for Parmer, Castro, and Swisher counties, they are both High Plains and Llano Estacado. The problem is that people's usage of those terms overlaps quite a bit in the western half of the Panhandle-- "High Plains" is sometimes used as far south as Lubbock and Llano Estacado is sometimes used as far north as Amarillo. Any line drawn (including the one from the Panhandle Tourism Council) is going to be a little artificial, though it's still necessary to do so for organizational purposes. If you'd like to propose a specific change to this border, I'm all ears, but just keep in mind that there is no single "right" way to do it based on common usage of the terms. Texugo 02:00, 14 December 2009 (EST)